Microsoft released a new set of developer tools Monday meant to ease the creation of games for the next version of the company's Xbox video game console.

XNA Studio is one of the first major products to come out of the XNA initiative Microsoft announced a year ago to standardize game development across different systems. Developers could use the same XNA tools to create games for Windows PCs, the current Xbox and future versions of the console, Microsoft promised. XNA Studio is based on Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Microsoft's collection of code-writing tools for Windows developers who work in large teams.